Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Show HN: Posterity Automations – Get things done from the afterlife

posterity.life

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 93 posts

Re: Show HN: Posterity Automations – Get things done from the afterlife

#81

Post by anigbrowl »

mohamedattahri wrote: post #79
anigbrowl wrote: post #78

Interesting idea, although I'm not sure it's more effective than drafting a will and including the same information about passwords etc. - which is admittedly more difficult for non-technical users. How do you hedge against the risk of people using your service to commit posthumous crimes?

Interesting question for jurists; can you commit a crime if you technically and legally don’t exist?

Technically, I suppose the crime would be committed at the time the user configured the service to perform some action that would probably result in their arrest if alive. It just strikes me that you're sort-of automating the executorship process which might leave you holding the bag for a malicious customer.

Re: Show HN: Posterity Automations – Get things done from the afterlife

#82

Post by vineyardmike »

irq-1 wrote: post #67
ghufran_syed wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

or maybe structure the organization as two parts, an independent trust that acts as a custodian with set aside assets to cover the running costs over the expected lifetime of the covered population , and a technology company that builds markets and operates the service on behalf of the trust (or trusts)? kind of like how a regulated brokerage, pension fund or insurance company operates. The difficult part is credibly…

The oldest organizations are churches and universities. Seems like they should be involved managing something like this.

Banks and trusts management firms generally have a good track record. Lately banks have been much more speculative but historically existed because they had peoples trust. Trust management firms that manage trusts have to last because it’s part of the purpose of a trust. I’d imagine a digital trust could have potential, where you add some sort of digital artifact and it’s expected to be accessible.

Churches and universities are not something I would bet heavily on in the next 100 years. Some will survive, but society may not continue to favor them like we’ve seen recently.

Churches surely have ahem a hand in the afterlife planning of many people, and a good track record for being their at time of death, but they’ve recently taken a massive beating in terms of attendance in much of American.

Universities were pretty rare a long time ago, and society has seen lots of new ones recently. I don’t know if I’d bet that any but the biggest names (endowments) eg ivy leagues, Oxford etc. can be counted on to last another hundred+ years.

Re: Show HN: Posterity Automations – Get things done from the afterlife

#83

Post by prepend »

mohamedattahri wrote: post #75
prepend wrote: post #74

I used to really like IFTTT. They changed. They turned off stuff that used to work and added different licenses. I would never rely on IFTTT to work in 5 years, much less 50. This is a neat idea, but it doesn’t seem like it will work when I really need it to.

IFTTT is really the beginning. We’ll be rolling out webhooks, so hopefully, you can build something you can trust off of it. Edit: Typo.

That’s a good direction. I think you’ll need to deliver a core set of functions that you can promise to run. And describe all the ways you’ll guarantee it to run and even what happens when your company ceases to exist.

Re: Show HN: Posterity Automations – Get things done from the afterlife

#84

Post by motohagiography »

This is a brilliant idea, and terrifying experiment, in finding out what people were harbouring to their deaths, and how they wanted to project back into the future some material change. Most of it will be to cause harm, and some of it will be so beautiful as to make tolerating the human smallness of the rest of it worthwhile, or so I'd venture.

Re: Show HN: Posterity Automations – Get things done from the afterlife

#86

Post by dxuh »

omoikane wrote: post #47
dxuh wrote: post #30

Excuse the harsh question, but how many people using this have actually died yet? As far as we know, you could just collect money and never trigger anything. It's also very hard to collect reviews for this service. I love the idea and I would like to have it, but I find it a hard sell to actually rely on it.

"Never trigger anything" is actually not the worst outcome, compared to prematurely releasing your secrets, accidentally or intentionally.

Yes, great point!

Re: Show HN: Posterity Automations – Get things done from the afterlife

#87

Post by troydavis »

ghufran_syed wrote: post #32
sebhook wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder if the whole site could be put in a trust with legal stipulations to maintain hosting funds. The trustees would be the management teams, then potentially a corporate trustee who could keep the lights on in the event of a permanent code freeze. I think partnering with a forward thinking legal firm that specializes in estate planning would be a cool avenue to explore that further.

or maybe structure the organization as two parts, an independent trust that acts as a custodian with set aside assets to cover the running costs over the expected lifetime of the covered population , and a technology company that builds markets and operates the service on behalf of the trust (or trusts)? kind of like how a regulated brokerage, pension fund or insurance company operates. The difficult part is credibly…

Cryonics service providers do that. Here's an example from Alcor, the largest: https://www.alcor.org/library/the-alcor-patient-care-trusts/

"At Alcor, patient storage costs are paid from two separate but interrelated Trusts: the Alcor Patient Care Trust, and the Alcor Care Trust Supporting Organization. … This conservative funding arrangement is designed to cover the cost of patient storage solely from the income from the Trusts, thereby assuring that such funding will continue indefinitely into the future."

Re: Show HN: Posterity Automations – Get things done from the afterlife

#88

Post by pksebben »

donclark wrote: post #35
soco wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I see a market opening: a service to track and manage the afterlife of afterlife services.

Seeing this makes me also think... why not offer a service that will lock down all finance, identity and other related services upon the event of a perceived attack? Sure, it would be worthless if it was too sensitive. I key feature would be that it could be unlocked in 5mins or less by an account holder.

this would be vulnerable to DOSing. Imagine me, your competition, with a finger over a button that can make your money useless for the next five minutes.

Re: Show HN: Posterity Automations – Get things done from the afterlife

#89

Post by DonHopkins »

The Law And Order episode "Rapture" is about a web site that automatically sends out its client's pre-written confessional and gloating emails after the Rapture takes place, which it cleverly detects when the two owners don't check in after a certain amount of time. Unfortunately they both die due to other less supernatural circumstances, the emails are triggered prematurely, and all hell breaks loose!

https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Recap/LawAndOrderS19E...

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1343619/

Re: Show HN: Posterity Automations – Get things done from the afterlife

#90

Post by bryanrasmussen »

idlewords wrote: post #55
bryanrasmussen wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

most of those I've seen have been shut down your other services after you die, which is really a subset of schedule things after you die.

The ones I'm thinking of were variations on "send these emails after my death is somehow confirmed"

actually it made me imagine scenarios of lifelong enemies sending a message every anniversary after their death - keeping seat for you in hell, don't dawdle!
Post reply on HN